Worth the Fall
by effulgentcolors
Summary: It's Storybrooke's Annual High Heels Summer Sprint. And Emma Swan gets dragged in.


_Storybrooke's Annual High Heels Summer Sprint_

Emma Swan was the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming, her son was currently spending the week with his adoptive mother – the Evil Queen and she was sort of, kind of, maybe, probably, could-everyone-just-leave-them-alone dating Captain Hook. Yet Storybrooke's annual high heels summer sprint was the craziest thing she had heard of in awhile.

So when a week before the sprint Belle jogged up to her in 6-inch deep blue heels (why? why would anyone wear this in the middle of the day?), asking Emma if she wanted to sign up, the sheriff did her damnest not to laugh in the girl's face. She really _really_ did. And she succeeded, not counting the couple of snorts that escaped before she could get herself under control.

"Yeah, I'm sorry, Belle," she tried to put on an apologetic smile, which came off as more of a painful grimace. "I think I'm gonna pass."

"But everybody joins," exclaimed Belle, bubbling with excitement before giving her statement a second thought and scrunching up her nose. "Well, you know not _everybody_. Every girl. Though guys are welcome to compete as long as they are… you know – wearing heels."

Emma liked Belle. Only she didn't _actively_ like her, it was more like she knew that she was supposed to like her. But currently the girl's giggles were making her cringe. So she made a hasty excuse about Mary-Margaret waiting for her at Granny's and started to walk away only to be met by the other girl's excitement once again because _can you imagine_ she was also going to the only place in this town that serves decent food. Sometimes Emma really wanted to remind people that she wasn't exactly a people person.

Arriving at Granny's doesn't help even one bit. Apparently the annual sprint is the talk of the town. A dozen girls running down main street in tank tops and high-heels for a 1000 dollars prize and people are all sorts of excited. Go figure! The sheriff's eyes were about to roll right out of her head.

"Emma!" Mary-Margaret waves her over to her booth and Emma plops down with a sigh of relief.

Finally someone with enough common sense to-

"Did you sign up for the sprint?"

"What?" Emma gapes at her mother, willing her to be joking. No such luck.

"The annual sprint? You have to sign up! It's so much fun!" the brunette beamed at her, making Emma's stomach turn in apprehension.

"What's that about you not joining us for Storybrooke's biggest event of the year?" came Ruby's voice from above and Emma raised her eyes to see the waitress standing next to their table, hands on her hips and an eyebrow arched in disbelief.

"Alright, look!" Emma lifted up her hands in a show of defeat. "I don't do sprints in high-heels, alright? I'll make sure there's a paramedic around for you guys though."

"What's wrong, Miss Swan? Scared?"

Emma whirled around in her seat to see Regina smirking at her from the door where she had just entered, Henry in tow. She wasn't sure if she should be happy that the other woman was speaking to her at all or apprehensive because of the predatory look in her eyes.

"You're in on this too?" asked the blonde, unable to contain her disbelief.

"Every woman in Storybrooke joins the annual sprint, sheriff. Unless, of course, they are too much of a sore loser."

Emma huffed, rolling her eyes at the cheap attempt to rile her up and turned back to her mother, only to find her staring back expectantly. As was every other person in the diner. She wasn't one to crack under pressure and she had every intention of telling them off but… they all did this stupid thing together. And those people were her family now and she was trying to fit in, trying not to run (oh, the irony!) and before she knew what she was doing Emma had opened her mouth.

"Alright, fine."

Enough to say that the cheers that followed did not sit well with her.

* * *

"So let me make sure I have understood this correctly," said Killian slowly, caught somewhere between bewildered and amused. "You will be competing against all the other ladies in this town to determine who can run the fastest down main street in these monstrosities you insist on calling footwear?"

Emma groaned, dropping her head in her hands and leaning back from the bench they were currently sitting on, supposedly enjoying the fresh air and the ocean's breeze.

"I know, I know. It's absolutely ridiculous!"

"Then why are you taking part in this ridiculous custom, lass?"

"Because! Ruby and Belle are doing it. Mary-Margaret is doing it. Regina is doing it, for crying out loud! And I just wanna…"

"Be part of it."

Emma raised her eyes to meet the understanding gaze of the man next to her. Had she mentioned recently how much she lo-liked _liked_ this thing (whatever it was) they had? Oh, right, she haven't. She was trying not to think about it too much, let alone talk about it. She was relaxed, she was chill, she was fiiine. She was going with the flow. She needed to get out of her own head before it exploded.

"Wanna come and watch me make a fool of myself?" she asked, a somewhat resigned grin stretching her lips.

"I wouldn't miss it for the world, luv" he grinned back, drawing her into his side and kissing the top of her head as Emma huffed and tried to keep up her annoyed façade, a reluctant smile pulling at her lips anyway.

* * *

"First group is:" Grumpy's voice carried down the whole street where almost every man and child in Storybrooke was lined up, as close to the yellow lines separating the girls' track as possible. "Ella, Aurora, Mary-Margaret, Ariel!"

Emma let out a sigh of relief. Thank God for small miracles. She did _not_ want to be in the first group. Tapping the narrow heel of her right shoe on the pavement she thought she would prefer to see what exactly was expected of her first. Emma Swan had chased more than one scumbag in less than ideal footwear but she had never gone for a full-out sprint in the kind of 4+ inch beauties all the girls were currently wearing.

"And GO!"

Upon the dwarf's mark the four girls shot forward and Emma's eyebrows jumped up in surprise. Damn! Fairytale princesses knew their heels. The fact that Ariel had spend significantly less time not only on heels but on legs seemed to take its toll as she came in last, Aurora just slightly ahead of her with her mother beating Ella by a couple of seconds in her black and white cone heels. Well, that was intense! Emma shuffled her feet a little. She was not nervous, she was just now realizing that maybe she should have done a lap or two beforehand, just to reacquaint herself with her black stilettos that had been gathering dust for the last year or so.

"Group 2!"

Emma looked up to see Marian (oh, please, don't let Regina be in the same group), Kathryn, Nova (really? The nuns were doing this too?!) and Tink. Before the sheriff had even heard the signal the girls were off and soon enough Tink was twirling around on her 5-inch cream-coloured ankle strap heels, grinning from ear to ear and shaking hands with the other girls.

"Group 3!" Grumpy's call sounded very much like a death sentence to Emma. "Regina, Ruby, Emma and Belle!"

Oh, great, the 'I was born in heels' group. Emma rolled her shoulders a bit, taking her place between Ruby and Belle. She focused on the short distance ahead. She knew that if she looked up she could find Henry, Killian and David, probably her mom too, all smug grins and ridiculous cheering. But she didn't look up, she concentrated, she just wanted to do this and be done with it.

Looking back, her attitude just might have been her downfall.

"GO!" Grumpy's cry launched them all forward, Belle starting a second later than the rest.

Emma could feel the librarian a few steps behind her as her heels hit the pavement at regular intervals. More than half way there she realized that both Regina and Ruby were way ahead of her and she could slow down. For some reason she didn't but the thought itself proved to be enough of a distraction. Emma had no idea what happened with her legs but before she knew it she was face down on the track. Her palms stung almost as much as Grumpy's impossibly loud 'We have a fall!' Emma got up without missing a beat, completely forgetting the race and just walking the rest of the way to the finish line, stable on her feet.

She didn't hear who had won in her group, didn't check if anyone was staring at her, just made her way to the closest bench because she was suddenly aware of the blood sliding down her legs from her cut knees.

"Sheriff, do you need me to check these out?" Whale was suddenly in her line of vision, a bit of anxiety in his voice.

"No, I'm fine," she replied evenly before lifting her head to see her parents and Henry making their way to her.

"Emma! Sweetie, are you alright?" Mary-Margaret kneeled before her, looking her over and frowning when she saw some blood on the inside of her right arm. "Why don't you let Whale-"

"I'm fine!" repeated Emma with a bit more force. "You should get back in there for the race between the group winners."

"That's not important."

"Well, it's certainly more important than a few scrapes."

Mary-Margaret pursed her lips, she obviously didn't agree but thought that arguing might only make her daughter feel worse about the whole thing.

"Alright. But you go home and get these cleaned up. Deal?"

Emma rolled her eyes but nodded in agreement.

"Fine. But David and Henry stay here to cheer you on," she spotted Killian, standing a couple of steps behind her father and cut off the reply that was about to come from her mother. "Killian can come with me. I'm sure he has some rum to disinfect these."

The pirate lifted an amused eyebrow at her but the joke did the trick, reassuring her parents that she was fine and getting a laugh out of Henry. The kid hugged her and started back towards the crowd, calling back the David and Mary-Margaret.

* * *

"You alright, Swan?" Killian's voice came from the kitchen, accompanied by the sound of running water.

"It's just a few scrapes, trust me, I've had way worse."

"Aye. But that's not what I was asking for," replied the pirate, returning with a wet cloth in his hand and looking around. "You have anything else I should get?"

"Killian, seriously, these are gonna heal by themselves," she grunted in frustration, motioning towards her knees, but upon his expectant look she just sighed in resignation. "Bathroom, top drawer. There should be some antiseptic and band-aids."

The brunet returned a few seconds later, setting his spoils on the coffee table and kneeling before her.

"To answer your question, I'm fine. I think the embarrassment hasn't set in yet," grumbled Emma, cringing at the memory of her dying swan act in front of the whole town.

"In case it helps, luv, it wasn't nearly that bad," murmured the pirate while he gently cleaned the blood from her knees and the inside of her elbow with the wet cloth in his hand. "You just got up and walked right down the track like nothing had happened and people? People are easy to fool like that, if you act like it's nothing, they'll believe it's nothing."

"Yeah, nothing. Just my dignity getting stomped on by eleven pairs of heels."

Killian shook his head with an amused huff, turning around to put some antiseptic on the fabric.

"No offense, Swan, but I don't think dignity had any place in that ridiculous show you ladies pulled off."

"Please, as if you wouldn't enter into any sort of competition that can prove your superiority to all the other guys in town," fired back Emma, applying just the right amount of sarcasm on the word 'superiority'.

"Yes, well, I was under the impression that you possessed more common sense than a dashing pirate, lass."

Killian gave her a wink before returning his attention to his task and started dabbing at her battered knees, without a warning that 'it would sting'. Emma was glad. What was the point of saying that? Everybody knew it would sting and telling you only made you think about it more.

"Now how does this work?" he asked himself, furrowing his eyebrows and twirling the band-aid in his hand.

A genuine smile took over Emma's still flushed face for the first time since she had set foot on the start line. For a fearsome pirate captain he could be way too adorable.

"Let me," she said, reaching for the band-aid but Killian pulled it away, putting it between his lips and managing to wedge his nail in the little slip.

He beamed at her triumphantly and leaned down to secure the little bandage over her left knee before grabbing another one to repeat the process on her other leg. Emma looked down at Killian's fingers flittering over her scraped knee and something in her chest constricted.

Suddenly a little blonde girl flashed before her eyes. She was sitting on the grass, legs drown up to her chest and hair falling all around her. She was scrubbing at her already abused knees, trying to get rid of the blood. If she went back like that and got blood anywhere it was not going to end well. Tears welled up in the girl's eyes but she just bit her lip and pushed forward. This wasn't an unfamiliar exercise for her, she was always running and jumping around, climbing trees, racing with the boys. It all led to quite a bit of falling. Cuts on her palms, her knees, even her chin and hipbones sometimes. They didn't hurt too much, not while the adrenalin was running along with her. But afterwards, afterwards she had to hide somewhere, find some tissues or dig out an old t-shirt to scrub away the blood and tears while the other kids ran back home. She could never quite decide what hurt more – the sting from her wounds or the fact that she had to take care of them by herself.

"Better?" Killian's voice snapped Emma back to the present, the air backing into her lungs in a whoosh.

The pirate was now inspecting the small cuts and bruising on the inside of her elbow but decided against bandaging this one. He leaned forward instead until his lips were just a breath away from her tender flesh. He blew on it gently, cooling the aggravated skin and causing some moisture to gather in her eyes.

"All better," she whispered, making Killian glance up at her at the strange thickness in her voice.

He opened his mouth to say something but in the next second Emma's hand was on the back of his neck, drawing his forward. Her lips found his and she let out something between a sigh and a sob as she leaned forward, sinking into his warmth. Killian's arms found their way around her waist, pulling her closer and he returned her kiss enthusiastically, nibbling lightly at her lower lip. Emma's hands were relentless, running through his hair, down his neck, scratching here and there, rubbing small circles into his flesh, until she finally settled her palms on either side of his face, thumbs running over his cheeks as she pulled back to rest her forehead against his.

"Totally worth the fall," she breathed out, a giddy smile taking over her face, embarrassment completely forgotten as the warmth in her chest spread out through her whole body.

* * *

**A/N:** (this may or may not have been inspired by what happened to me yesterday at Cosmo's Summer Sprint)


End file.
